This Friday the Kranzberg Arts Center opens a photo show challenging popular media representations of events in Ferguson. The photographers focused the lives of Ferguson residents, details, portraiture, and children instead of just conflict. Participating photographer Chris Renteria, 40, saw unity where many see division.

“Whether I looked through my lens and saw a police officer in riot gear holding an assault rifle, or a 2-year-old in his mom’s arms as she’s fist-raised and chanting - in each person there’s humanity,” said Renteria.

Flipping through the nation’s family album, what’s missing? That question led director Thomas Allen Harris to create “Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People,” a film that examines how photography shaped the identity and perceptions of blacks in America.

“In some ways, it is a history lesson, although it’s kind of a different take on history because we have a lot of contemporary artists in the film,” Harris told “Cityscape” host Steve Potter on Friday. “In many ways, as they do this, they reshape the way in which we view history.”

Late one sunny afternoon in late September eight photographers gathered at the Grand Avenue entrance to Tower Grove Park. For roughly 15 minutes the photographers chatted about gear, the quality of sunlight slipping through the leaves, and the stories behind some of their favorite photographs before slipping out into the park to document their surroundings.

The Sheldon has its own way of celebrating St. Louis’ birthday. Its new exhibit "The City at 250: A Celebration of St. Louis in Photographs" stemmed from a city-wide photo contest the Sheldon launched with the Beacon (now part of St. Louis Public Radio) that received over 500 entries. Focusing on photos of the city as it is today, the exhibit is a companion to the Sheldon's “Imagining the Founding of St. Louis.” Together, they offer a then and now view for the city’s 250th celebration.

The St. Louis area is crawling with photographic opportunities. Local professional Ryan Archer took advantage of one of them to win Best in Show in the Sheldon’s “The City at 250” photo contest.

Archer’s “City Museum Climbers,” entered in the “Events and People” category, garnered him $1,000 and a place in “The City at 250” exhibit, opening June 6. The competition was a collaborative effort of The Sheldon and the St. Louis Beacon, now St. Louis Public Radio. The Beacon merged in December with St. Louis Public Radio and is no longer a separate entity.

“Finding Vivian Maier,” a documentary opening Feb. 25 at the Plaza Frontenac Cinema, tells the story of a woman who worked as a nanny in New York and Chicago. She also took thousands of photographs that were never published and only discovered fairly recently.

Her story piqued the interest of the art world. The quality of her work has sustained it.

On display now at the Sheldon Art Galleries is “Dan Younger: Travel Places,” a collection of photographs by University of Missouri-St. Louis Art Professor Dan Younger.

The photographs were taken at U.S. tourist destinations over the span of ten years, the result of Younger’s habit of carrying two cameras – one for his family and one for art. Taken in public spaces, they fall under the category of “street photography.”

Poetry Scores, an organization translating poems into different media, is asking St. Louisans to picture themselves through the lines of a Greek psychoanalyst.

On the Metrolink, in bars and even at funerals, cell-phone photographers are capturing selfies -- self-portraits -- usually bound for Facebook, Instagram and other social media. But now, they now have a more poetic destination.

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: If you've recently found yourself lost in the St. Louis Art Museum, you are forgiven. So much has changed in the old Cass Gilbert building that almost all once familiar galleries are now full of surprises, with the airing of paintings, sculptures, installations and decorative arts that were hiding in storage.

It was tweeted in January by the commander of the International Space Station, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. He's been making it his job to not only lead Expedition 35 of the ISS but also amass a dazzling collection of images of the Earth from space.

(Here's a full map of his images taken high above locations all over the world)

If the experience were tallied up in a MasterCard commercial, it might sound like this: Transporting 30,000 images and 6,000 cameras from Oklahoma City: $25,000. Having them on display year-round in Grand Center: Priceless.

St. Louisans and other visitors can visit roomfuls of transformative photographs at the new IPHF in Grand Center, including Edward Steichen’s “Garbo,” Margaret Bourke-White’s “Fort Peck Dam” and Dorothea Lange's“Migrant Mother.”

National Geographic last week announced the winners in its annual photo contest. According to the contest website, they received more than 22,000 entries from amateur and professional photographers around the world.

Here's a selection of the winning images, including editors' picks, viewers' choice and honorable mentions. You can see the rest on their website.

On a recent afternoon at an estate sale outside Los Angeles, Lauren White found about 40 photos of the Rolling Stones taken during their American tour of 1965 — completely unclaimed in an unmarked box.

Photo Flood Saint Louis describes themselves as a "a collective of photographers, living in the area, who occasionally invade parts of town to record it in a surge of imagery" and "create a photographic map of St. Louis" in the process.

St. Louis Public Radio has partnered with Photo Flood to celebrate our area through these "surges," and show you the work resulting from each.

The first photography staff at the Illinois State Journal carried heavy, clumsy and slow Speed Graphic cameras. They shot on glass plates, and only had a few precious exposures to use throughout their day.

Not just the '30s — also the three decades that followed. But let's not spoil the fun. Basically: Go here to experience a special interactive about the amazing found photos of Charles W. Cushman. You won't regret it!

Then come back and leave your comments below — or on Twitter: #nprcushman

On January 18, 2011, the very last batches of Kodachrome film were processed at Dwayne's Photo Lab in Parsons, Kansas. Webster University students and faculty were there to witness that last run, which included 100 rolls of their own.

More than a million Americans are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. About a quarter of them are women, and in St. Louis and throughout the country, African-American women are disproportionately affected.

An HIV diagnosis can lead not just to debilitating medical problems, but to social stigma and isolation. But as St. Louis Public Radio’s Véronique LaCapra reports, a photography project is giving some HIV-positive women a new way to look at their disease and its challenges.

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: As I was walking through the “Bare Witness: Photographs by Gordon Parks” exhibit at the St. Louis Museum, I was reminded of when I first became familiar with Gordon Parks.

I was a student at Iowa State University on one of my rare "study sessions" at the library. As I remember it, things weren’t going too well and my mind kept wandering off from my studies. So, I got up and looked for photography books.